Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

He also made another stunning allegation. He says the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama back in 2004.

“They went after—and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things—they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the—and judicial,” Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News.

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He went on: “But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of—heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House—their own people.”

…Tice first blew the whistle on what he alleged was seriously unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies in 2005. He later admitted he was the key source in a bombshell New York Times report that exposed the Bush administration’s use of warantless wiretapping of international communications in the United States.

The Bush administration admitted to the wiretapping on a small scale but denied Tice’s claims that the tactic was likely being used to gather data on millions of Americans.

Is this true? If it is, it suggests that this could go beyond constitutional issues to possible criminal activity like blackmail.

Unless Republicans in Congress are willing to put their country first and pull out all the stops to get to the bottom of this whole scandal, the American people will likely never know the full truth.